A BROTHER and sister now have a criminal record after being convicted of fly-tipping rubbish behind a pharmacy in Harrow Weald.

Lavinia and Ian Fernandez were recorded by a closed-circuit television camera pulling up in a white van behind PD Nowell Chemist in Weald Lane on April 11 last year and unloading and dumping six bags of trash as well as wood, fencing materials and other boxes before making off.

Council officers traced the siblings by searching Companies House records for the name, LMF Solutions, written on the side of van, and it transpired the firm was a cleaning company of which she was a director and he was company secretary.

The Fernandezes had each denied one count of depositing controlled waste on land otherwise than in accordance with a waste management licence but a jury at Harrow Crown Court took just 20 minutes to find them guilty on Thursday July 22.

Lavinia Fernandez, 38, of Radcliffe Road, Harrow, who said she had lost her job as a social worker in south London, was given a six-month conditional discharge.

Her brother, a plumber of Queens Court, Kenton Lane, Harrow, whose age was not recorded by the court, was given a four month conditional discharge, and they were also ordered to pay costs of £100 each.